Marco Benevento keeps audience guessing with improvisation

Marco Benevento and his band have launched into the third leg of a “gigantic fall tour.” They’ve been playing songs from their new album TigerFace for the last four months.

By JEREMY JONESFor the Herald-Journal

Marco Benevento and his band have launched into the third leg of a “gigantic fall tour.” They’ve been playing songs from their new album TigerFace for the last four months. “The songs really have evolved,” Benevento said. “Sometimes the evening calls for a shorter version of a song. Sometimes it calls for a longer version and we wind up stretching it.” After Benevento and the band have gotten to know a song through playing it live, they start “jumping off the diving board” and surprising themselves and the audience with increasingly exploratory improvisational sections. The songs “Going West” and “Eagle Rock,” in particular, have grown in delightful ways. “Live is different than a record,” Benevento said. “You’re kind of feeding off the crowd.” Whether playing for dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people, Benevento seems to absorb the energy of a given crowd and allows that energy to contribute, like a fourth member of the band, to the shape of each song. “There are so many factors,” Benevento said. “The number of songs you played before hand. The mood of the band. If you plop a song in the set list at the right time, it might really end up being the song that stands out most. You realize the audience is really listening, nobody’s talking, nobody’s at the bar. Everyone’s really dancing and checking it out and we’re like, ‘Whoa, we really got everyone’s attention on this one! I don’t know how that happened, but let’s keep going!’” Music critics often speak of Benevento as a sound sculptor, as though he carves music from the air; as a landscape artist, whose designs come alive in layers of sound that pulse and breathe. Known for playing both melodic and experimental electric piano, Benevento tours with the drummer Joe Russo as the Benevento Russo Duo and he’s jammed with a who’s who of the jazz and jam band world, including guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter, drummer Stanton Moore, and bassist Mike Gordon of Phish. He’s currently touring with Andrew Barr of The Barr Brothers and bassists Dave Dreiwitz of Ween. “With Dave and Andy,” Benevento said, “I know that if I decided to just play totally random songs, covers, or random song ideas – if I decide to throw any curve balls – these guys, not only are they ready for it, they’re happy that it’s happening. They’re laughing, instead of going like, ‘Dude, what’re you doing? We have to stick to our show!’ They’re really open to the idea that anything goes.” After touring together for nearly four years, the trio knows the songs and each other well enough to both anticipate and surprise each other at every turn. “For the most part I’m the main curve ball thrower,” said Benevento, laughing. “Not that Dave and Andy are playing it safe.” Each member of the band pushes constantly at the limits, nightly. Benevento in particular seems to sprout extra arms and legs on stage. “There’s moments when I’m playing the piano, and there’s the looper going on and there’s this other box that I have that plays all these other parts of the song, then I have my laptop with some other parts of the song that I can trigger and there’s a bass line that I wrote, a drum part, and for a split second I think, ‘It’s almost like I don’t need to play piano.’ It’s like the piano is secondary,” Benevento said. And it’s in the heat of an astoundingly complex and demanding song that Benevento realizes that “it’s not about the piano.” “It’s about the song and getting all the parts together,” Benevento said. “The piano happens to be featured and I play some notes on the piano. Some songs involve the piano to a minimal extent even though that’s the main ax, the main instrument on the stage.” Each night is an energetic, entertaining piano rock concert with moments that are “very stream of conscious,” followed by moments of rehearsed precision, and mind bending virtuosity. “The real peaks happen when we’re playing an upbeat tune and everybody’s dancing and they’re just really happy to be in the room,” Benevento said. “It’s like being a deejay. You put on a good tune and, ‘All right, everybody’s dancing!’ The crowd’s having fun. They know the music’s there but they’re not thinking too much about it. I always like those moments when a specific tune raises audiences up a bit.” Laughing, Benevento added, “And of course, I love those moments where we wind up stretching a song and wind up surprising ourselves with a certain part of the song. Those moments are uplifting, too.”